Silver Thunderbird

America built some special cars, cars that evoke memory and emotion. Marc Cohn remembers one.

When buying a used car, punch the buttons on the radio. If all the stations are rock and roll, there's a good chance the transmission is shot.
--Larry Lujack

The Unlicensed Dremel Tool

It used to be a truism that guns only had two enemies, politicians and rust. I think that needs to updated to include power tools.

I like power tools of all sorts. Milling machines to chain saws, they are designed to do specific jobs and do them well. I have even successfully used power tools on firearms a time or two. You don't need a Dremel tool or a belt sander to damage a firearm, you can totally wreck one with sandpaper, a hand drill, a tap and die set, or some jeweler's files. Like any other tool, a Dremel just lets you work faster. So you get to ruin that gun in jig time and go watch the game, too.

The image comes from Everyday, No Days Off, my latest addition to the blogroll. The title of the post comes from a friend of mine that works in a gunshop. He occasionally sees the sad results of the collision between power tools, good intentions, and firearms.

A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.
--Robert Hughes

Before the Match Haiku

Blue sky, blue walls.
Steel plates, silhouettes, swingers.
Soon, the buzzer.

A good athlete always mentally replays a competition over and over, even in victory, to see what might be done to improve the performance the next time.
--Frank Shorter

Dinner With Borepatch

Borepatch, the lovely (if I may be so bold) Mrs. Borepatch, and Borepatch 2.01 and Borepatch 2.02 stopped here on their way to Atlanta. I had promised a home cooked meal to break up the journey, and when deciding what to cook, I remembered a recipe I saw on Eyes Never Closed.

Eyes Never Closed lamented that he had eaten them before thinking of taking a picture, so here is my take off on his Whiskey Fried Porkchops. All a cook can ask for is to see his guests eat, so this recipe is a keeper. Applewood rub, Redneck Pepper, and a water glass full of bourbon. I saw someone take thirds.

Good to spend an evening with the Borepatches, too. A chance to talk and share, discuss politics, computers, and guns.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.
--Tennessee Williams

Yesterday Afternoon

Out in the field after the turkey and before the dessert. Four of us taking turns with a black powder flintlock rifle. Here's the rifle's owner looking downrange at the results of his last shot.
A lot of fun and a look back at history. It brings the idea of being a Minuteman into perspective.

Pick up a rifle and you change instantly from a subject to a citizen.
--Col. Jeff Cooper

A Thanksgiving Proclamation

This is going to be a short post and a long quote. I hope that each of you is with friends and loved ones today. Take a moment to remember all the men and women serving overseas.

In October 1789, the first President of the United States issued a proclamation to the people of the United States. I think today would be a good to read it and remember the beginning of this holiday, what we are thankful for, and who we are thankful to.

General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

--(signed) G. Washington

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Alan, over at SnarkyBytes, points out a link to a report on an internal TSA memo that paints anyone who protests the new security procedures as a domestic extremist. The label is applied to "any person, group or alternative media source that actively objects to, causes others to object to, supports and/or elicits support for anyone who engages in such travel disruptions at U.S. airports in response to the enhanced security procedures."

The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution recognizes my natural (or God given) right to free speech. One of the most protected areas of speech, according to numerous Supreme Court rulings, is political speech. Airing issues in the public arena is was a normal part of the public discourse in America. In this brave new world, objecting to the loss of your rights ensures that your name will end up on a Homeland Security watch list. Be careful what you think, be even more careful what you say.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
--George Washington

With Apologies to Pastor Niemoller

First they took the pocketknives and I did not speak out because I can get by without a pocketknife.

Then they took the nail clippers and I did not speak out because I can get by without trimming my nails.

Then they asked me to step through the metal detector and I did not speak out because I was not hiding anything metallic.

Then they took the liquids from my carry on and I did not speak out because I can get shampoo and mouthwash at my destination.

Then they asked me to take off my shoes and I did not speak out because I didn't care if people saw my socks.

Then they started body scanning and intrusive body searches and I did not speak out because I had been so conditioned that I forgot what it was to be an American with unalienable rights.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
--The 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Joker One

Donovan Campbell, then a Lieutenant in the Marine Corps, wrote a book about his experiences in Anbar Province called Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood.

In it he recounts an event that speaks volumes about the Marine Corps. At the end of a long day of combat, tired and shaken, Lt. Campbell was walking through a hanger when one of his Marines asked him something that brought him to tears.

Sir, he said, do you think we fought well today? I mean, that was our first big fight. Would the Marines who fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, you know, be proud of us?
--A question to Lt. Campbell in his book, Joker One

The Milgram Experiments

The Milgram Experiments, named for Professor Stanley Milgram, was a series of social behavior experiments carried out in the early 1960s. They were designed to test people's willingness to submit to the direction of an authority figure. These experiments were done partly in response to the Nazi era in Germany, trying to understand how people could have submitted to such moral evil without fighting back.

The most famous of the experiments had an actor, playing the part of a test subject, and another person, the actual subject of the test, sitting at what appeared to be an electrical control panel that was hooked up to the actor. When the actor incorrectly answered a question, the test subject was directed to give him an electric shock. It seemed to the test subject that the actor was actually being shocked, crying out, banging the walls and begging for someone to stop.

If the test subject tried to stop, he was ordered to continue, and only if he resisted through a series of commands would the experiment cease. Milgram and his fellow researchers expected that people would refuse much earlier, but in fact 65% continued through the entire series, believing they had delivered a series of shocks culminating in three 450 volt shocks to test subjects for failing to answer questions. Only one person stopped before the 300 volt range was reached.

Milgram wrote a book, Obedience to Authority, about his work and the insights he gleaned from it. The most salient point was:

The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow.

Read about the experiments and you will no longer wonder about what is going on in this video. Because it is not just the TSA agents that are complicit. It is every person in the line, standing there watching this.

We held the German people responsible because they stood by and let moral wrongs take place. Do we not hold ourselves to the same standard? If it is wrong to strip and grope a child, does it make it right if the person doing it is wearing a uniform? If you saw a child being stripped and fondled by a pervert in a trench coat, would you just stand in line and watch? Does our desire to be cooperative with those who appear to be authority figures extend so far that seeing that same child fondled by someone in a uniform is acceptable?

Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

You Are On Your Own

From a news article in L.A. Times, comes a story of a man who, after 70 years of marriage and 5 years of watching his wife slip into dementia, made a personal decision. Lacking any other means to end her suffering, he took a handgun to the nursing home and shot her. He's 88, had cancer and multiple bypass surgery and probably figures his time is short.

That's not the point of this post, though. This is:

Around noon, a single gunshot echoed through the halls of the 198-bed nursing home. Police arrived a few minutes later and surrounded the building, calling in backup from the California Highway Patrol, the Orange County Sheriff's Department and two neighboring police departments. "We didn't know if we had a shooter or not," said Sgt. Steve Bowles of the Seal Beach Police Department.

In a situation where a shot had been fired in a nursing home, a location where you expect to find vulnerable, elderly people, the police response was to surround the building. If there had been an active shooter, he could have gone room to room, killing at his leisure, while backup units piled up outside. Just like Columbine, Virginia Tech and the Petit home in Connecticut.

First they pass laws demanding we be unarmed. Then they leave people inside with the shooters while they establish command posts, set up perimeters, and do other cool tactical stuff. I want to see a law passed that says in any location where concealed carry is not permitted, police have to rush in immediately and begin clearing the building.

Until then, you are on your own.

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.
--Dalai Lama

Random Acts of Culture

John Wanamaker built a retail chain, with outlets in Philadelphia and New York. More important to this post, as his success grew, he built the Grand Depot. Two million feet of floor space, a huge, polished marble atrium, decorated with art. In the atrium is the largest operational pipe organ in the world, known as the Wanamaker Organ. In the decades after his death, his chain of stores faltered, outlets were closed, major works of art auctioned off, and finally the business was dissolved. Macy's bought the building and parts of the lower floors are used as a retail store.

The organ is still played, some of the art can still be seen, and the beauty of the Grand Depot remains. The event in this video was carefully planned. On October 30th, 2010, members of various choral groups were invited to mingle in the shopping crowd, and participate in a Random Act of Culture. It is one in a nationwide series of similar events.

Beauty is a sense of harmony.
--Ayn Rand

Breaking Point

What happens when a hero reaches his personal breaking point? I don't want to post just part of the story, or rewrite it here. You'll just have to click this link and read about Father Dennis Rocheford. Marine combat veteran of Khe Sanh and Hue. Catholic priest and Navy Chaplin.

And when he gets to Heaven to St. Peter he will tell:
"One more Marine reporting, Sir -- I've served my time in Hell."
--Pfc. James A. Donahue, USMC, Guadalcanal Island, 1942

I Want a New Gun.

We like to think of ourselves as conservative, clear-eyed logical thinkers, but even so, this can happen. Thinking that a new gun will make you a better shooter is an example of magical thinking, but you see it all the time and guns stores and gun magazines play into this and make their money. When I first saw the text-to-movie uploads, I thought of creating this and I think it turned out okay. Here, in a world wide debut, is my first ever YouTube upload.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
--Ambrose Bierce

It Sure Is a Good Feeling

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
--Ronald Reagan

We Built the Largest Airline in the Free World

Here's a reminder of what we have lost. This is how one airline was marketing itself in the 1980's.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
--Winston Churchill

Don't Even Buy a Ticket

John Tyner decided he didn't want to be irradiated or groped and opted out of the whole process. Unfortunately he had already bought a ticket. When he tried to refuse the process, he was held against his will, and now he is under "investigation" by the TSA and may be fined $11,000 for refusing to be searched when he wasn't going to board the airplane anyway.

By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.
--unnamed TSA supervisor recorded by John Tyner at Lindbergh Field

Don't Fly

On December 28th, 2009, I wrote a post that has turned out to be ahead of it's time. In light of the TSA's latest rollout of xray strip scanners and crotch groping policies, I am bringing forward my proposal for how to make them stop. Because, I assure you, if this is not stopped now, at the airports, it will be rolled out across the country to courthouses and traffic stops near you. I wrote:

Don’t fly.
Don’t.
If you make an exception due to dire necessity, such as a death in the family, then accept the treatment you will receive. Otherwise, don’t fly.

Airline companies are marginal businesses. Full planes are profitable, planes half full are not.

If we want to change the way we are treated by the airlines and the TSA, the only way to do it is to stop accepting the mistreatment. It is the same thing as a battered woman that does nothing to separate herself from her abuser. People that know her shake their head and wonder why she keeps going back, knowing that more abuse was inevitable.

So here’s the plan. Drive. Don’t travel by plane. Take trips closer to home. Take a cruise. If it’s work related, do it by video conference. If 20 % of the people that will fly in 2010 did not, and let the airlines know the reason for their decision, changes would occur.

But if you pay your money to line up and be mistreated, and you already know it’s going to happen, exactly whose fault is that?

Once, in America, we were free, we had inalienable rights, and there was a prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure. I remember living there. It hard to even see how we got here, but we have to find a way back. I offer you an easy way to be part of the solution.

Don't buy their tea.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
--James Madison

-K-E-Y

I watched this show in reruns in the afternoon after school in the early 1960s. For kids slightly older than me that watched it new from 1956 to 1958, this clip will provide an echo to memory.

There's a new book about the Mickey Mouse Club that came out recently and I found it at the library last week. You have to be old enough to remember the show, I think, or the stories won't mean anything, but if you're in the early to mid boomer years, I recommend it. It's a reminder of America.

I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.
--Walt Disney

What Is The Desired Outcome?

The L.A. Times has some coverage of the committee that is studying the federal budget. They are trapped in a system that rewards compromise as admirable and is incapable of responding in a meaningful way to the realities of the situation.

The plan to make up 600 billion dollars and then use that made up money to buy government bonds will only make things worse, driving inflation by diluting the value of the currency and creating a situation where the value of savings and investments will disappear and the value of the dollar vs other currencies falls. Both U.S. economists and the leadership of other countries have warned the U.S. against this course of action.

Making up money to cover an unsustainable budget is no different than you getting a new credit card and using it to pay the minimum on your existing credit. The federal budget must not only be balanced, it must have some surplus in to begin to pay down the federal debt. This needs to happen immediately, while we are still a country that the rest of the world will trade with.

Unless, of course, an economic collapse is what is desired.

Compromise is when one person wants to rob a bank and the other person does not, and they compromise by deciding to rob a person outside of the bank.
--Christopher Myers

On the Eleventh Minute

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
--Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, May 1915

235 Years

Happy F'in Birthday, Marines.

Here's the message from the Commandant.

Here's a little motivation.



So raise a toast to us and to our Corps. Remember the ones who died, remember the ones serving now. Remember who we are, what we stand for, the places we served, and what it costs to be free.

There are only two kinds of people that understand Marines: Marines and the enemy. Everyone else has a second-hand opinion.
--Gen. William Thornson, U.S. Army

Drive-In Movies

After I got my driver's license, I went to the drive-in fairly often, and I cannot tell you the name of a single movie I ever saw, let alone the plot. The Timonium Drive-In and the Benjies Drive-In were the two I remember. Benjies is still in operation, and I expect that many a young couple are still not watching movies in the back rows on a Saturday night. I hope your memories bring you a smile like mine did when I heard this old song today.

Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.
--Jim Bishop

Garand Match

You can see the sun already, but it had to rain first. This is the conditions while I was shooting the slow fire prone stage. I'd whine more, but I shot a 95 with 2X so it's hard to put too much blame on conditions. Then the sun came out. You can see the glare on the front sight. In fact, that was about all I could see. My offhand score cratered and I shot a 256 with 3X overall.

I had fun and got some practice shooting in adverse conditions. A great way to spend a Saturday morning.

The first step, in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come, is to teach men to shoot.
-– President Theodore Roosevelt

But it's Just $700,000

The University of New Hampshire has been awarded $700,000 to study methane production in cows.

"Cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence," said the project's principal investigator, Ruth Varner of UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space.

In a country where the President can spend $200,000,000 a day to go on vacation, $700,000 seems insignificant. But I think it leaves a question unanswered. When the millions of wildebeest and zebras migrate across the plains of Africa, do they burp?

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
--Everett Dirksen

Stimulus

In the tradition of Aesop:

Billy-Bob's wife had been nagging him about the water level in the swimming pool. It was almost a foot low and the walls below the tile were showing. Billy-Bob knew that if his wife wasn't happy, he would have no peace, so bright and early on a Saturday morning, he decided to fix the problem.

He went out and looked at the pool and, sure enough, it was low. Since he had a gas powered irrigation pump, he hauled it over from the barn. Pretty good sized pump, Billy-Bob thought, I ought to be able to fill this pool by lunch time.

He stuck the outlet hose in the swimming pool, and since he didn't have any other source of water, he stuck the inlet hose in the swimming pool, too. Then he started the pump. Now the hoses were worn, and they leaked, and the fittings on the pressure side did too, but the motor ran strong and the pump was definitely moving water.

Billy-Bob went up on the porch and sat in the shade for a half an hour and then went back down to the pool. Water level looked about the same, although there was a small trickle running down the back side of the hill where the pump was sitting. He went over and pulled the outlet hose out of the pool, and water was shooting out of it. Reassured that he was pumping water into the pool, he dropped the hose back in, topped off the gas tank and went to do some other chores.

A couple of hours later, his wife came and got him. When he got to the pool, the water level was lower than when he started. Puzzled, he checked the hoses again, and again was reassured to see water pumping into the pool. Then he had a idea what the problem really was. Turning to his wife he said, "You keep an eye on this, I going to the farm supply store, we need a bigger pump."

What do you think a stimulus is? It's spending - that's the whole point! Seriously.
--Barack Obama

The Trestle is Still Out

Even if yesterday send some sort of message, it wasn't enough and it was way too late. TARP, socialized medicine, the GM takeover, the unsustainable debt, and the reality that we are not going to stop spending all means that there will be a crash.

Even CBS News sees the problem in front of the new Congress, although this article seems more amused than alarmed by the reality before us.

It won't be easy. Consider the promises of Utah's Mike Lee, who said at one point he thought it necessary to cut federal spending by 40 percent to balance the budget. It's nearly impossible to imagine how this could happen.

Here's why: In 2010, 20 percent of the $3.6 trillion federal budget went to defense, 20 percent to Social Security and 21 percent to Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. While lawmakers could potentially make some cuts to these programs, they simply aren't going to try to cut them completely -- unless they're looking to commit mass political suicide. (Even perhaps the most unapologetic Tea Party candidate, Nevada's Sharron Angle, retreated from her early promise to phase out Social Security during the campaign.)

Let's be generous and say Republicans would try to cut five percent of the budget from these areas next year. That means almost all of the remaining budget would need to be cut to meet that 40 percent threshold. That includes interest on the national debt, which is six percent of the budget and which America presumably needs to pay.

So, in spite of the efforts of the Democrats to keep everyone else out, some Republicans and a few Tea Party candidates have made it to the controls. If there isn't an immediate concerted effort, not just to slow this train, but to first stop it and then reverse direction, we will still crash. It might take a little longer, but it really won't matter if we wreck at 57 miles an hour or 70, will it? The trestle is out, continuing in the direction we are going at any speed will eventually take us over the edge. Whatever has to be cut from the budget, cut it. Social programs, foreign aid, the travel budget for the White House, Nancy Pelosi's private jet, whatever. Slam on the brakes like you can see the open water in front of the train. Otherwise, all we did yesterday was play musical chairs in the caboose.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
--Pr. Dwight Eisenhower

Ithaca 1960

I don't own any Ithaca firearms, but the spirit of this old ad spoke to me. There are only so many days and when you get one you can spend in the woods, it is a gift.

Click to biggify.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
-- John Muir

All I Can Do Is Shrug

Because now he knows how the citizens feel.

Bangor police officer denied right to vote after refusing to surrender weapon.

Dearing, who was patrolling his assigned beat near the Bangor Civic Center, decided to stop in and cast an early vote. He walked into the polling place in full uniform and stood in a short line with other voters.
One of the election officials told Dearing he couldn’t bring his gun inside. The officer said he thought it was a joke.
Election warden Wayne Mallar then approached Dearing and reiterated the request: Turn over your weapon to another officer or we can’t let you vote.
Dearing refused. “I would never relinquish my weapon,” the officer said later.
Mallar stood his ground. The officer said he left the civic center Friday feeling embarrassed and insulted.

So, you know what? I like it. The rules should be the same for all of us. If I can't carry a weapon into a location, neither should anyone else. I feel embarrassed and insulted every time my rights are violated, too.

...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
--From the Bill of Rights

"When Politicians Don't Lie"

If you live in the United States, get to the polls tomorrow. Don't count on anyone else. In the meantime, this was sent on by a friend and worth the time.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
--H.L. Mencken